The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1887-12-15
A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT.
Mississippi's Experience With Her pet
Humbug."
CHicEdsdr fHiss,) .NeseeUgey.


South Carolina is now being agi
tated from mountains to the sea,
over the proposition to establish an
Agricultural and Mechanical College,
copied after our OWN pet humbug.
The farmers Of the State are told
that the institution is for their ben.
eft and their sons will be taught
scientific agriculture, whereby they
can outstrip their fathers in the
preservation or reclamation OF their
lands in the production Of crops, and
their class prejudices are being
aroused to secure their active sup.
port of the scheme, which, if adopted,
will rebound to the interest of the
professional classes, the swell plant.
ers and tie educated gentry, who
secure employment at the college.
Mississippi has travelled the road
South Carolina is now importuned to
try, and it is pity our Palmetto
brethren do not seem sufficiently
posted to profit by our experience.
Almost daily we receive letters from
different portions of the State asking
for information concerning the work
ings OF our Agricultural and Mechan-
ical College, and we have, when we
could, furnished our correspondents
with short biography of the Mis-
sissipi Tombstone Industry" which
in six years operations and after
expending s355,000, turns out teco
scientific farmers having faith enough
in their theoretical education to
attempt to put it in practical utility.
Our school has now entered its
eighth year; has supported in ele-
gance, luxury and case since its
opening, q small army Of well dressed
and highly cultured people (most OF
whom never tried farming as a
business, and none of whom ever
made a success as a farmer has ex-
pended of the peoples money about
100000, and we defy its officers to
name ten of its graduates who are
to-day engaged in practical agricul-
ture.
Ten rich counties in the State
furnish more than half the attend.
ance; twenty:one counties have no
representative at all at the colleg-
and the assessment rolls of Oktib-
beha County shows t hat the property
valuation as whole has not in
creased in the Immediate vicinity of
the Agricultural and Mechanical as it
has in other portions Of the State
We assert, and defy successful con.
tradiction, that the tax rolls show
that the land of a member Of the
Board of Trustees, lying adjacent to
the collegs farm, has deprecated
in value 25 per cent. since the es-
tablishment of the college in sight of
his home.
We have had some rich experience,
also, with our munifcently paid
faculty, who devote a good portion
of their time travelling: around over
the State, holding farmers insti-
tutes (?) and keeping the people i'm
pressed with the wonderful work they
are doing and the great necessity for
further and bigger appropriations,
and this, too, while their places are
filed with subs, generally under.
graduates of the colleges, who are
also paid out Of the State. Treasury.
To illustrate Our Professor of
Agriculture, whose last report shows
be expends $4,000 in farm opera
tions and gets back $1,000 worth of
products, straddles the hobby: "Our
worn out lands and how to reclaim
them" and he gravely. tells our
farmers to "sow cow peas and turn
them under in the fall. Continue
this process, rotate and diversity
crops, and our lands" he says, will
bloom and blossom as the rose.'
And for this kind of advice our
producers are expected to pay him
$4,000 per annum and furnish him q
nice house to live in, and at the same
time pay his assistants $500 or $500
to attend to thesduties cf his depart
ment in the lecture room and on the
college farm. Bah
The advice and experience of one
such farmer as Dixon, of Georgia, is
of more value to agriculture than all
the college faculties in America, un-
less others are endowed with more
practibility than ours have ever dis
played. Ours are wonderful theorists,
but practical in nothing except in
lobbying big appropriations out of
the treasury.
It is amusing to US to observe in
the discussion of the question in
South Carolina, that the friends of
the college insist that they can es'
tablish one and run it without ad.
ditional taxation. We thought 80,
too, at the outset, and we, with other
members Of the original Board OF
Trustees, argued with our Legislators
that if they would appropriate $780,
900 to purchase the lands and erect
the necessary buildings, and then
give rs the Insignificant sum OF
$4,000 per annum for three years,
we would make the institution self.
sustaining thereafter. But was it so:
Let the 100000 in State bonds is
sued two years ago to defray the
expenses Of our too numerous State
institutions; the additional levy of
one mill ad valorem tax and the
enormous increase in privilege taxes
answer.
We want to say to our South Car
olina friends another thing in this
connection and we are done. Should
they determine to burden themselves
with an A oricultural and Mechanica